Multiple Modernisms: Negotiating Housing Models and Discourses during the New Deal at MoMA, 1832-1944

In 1932, the Modern Architecture: International Exhibition – which officially inaugurated MoMA’s commitment to modern architecture – deliberately separated housing from architecture, assigning to public housing a marginal place in the official narrative of American modernism. However, several less-documented exhibits devoted to governmental housing were organized by the New York museum between 1932 and 1944, in collaboration with federal agencies, local authorities, professional associations and cultural institutions. Still largely underestimated, these events had a pivotal role in modeling and fostering a public debate on government and low-cost housing in the US during the ‘30s, advancing new residential solutions, settlement models and innovative ways of living. The exhibitions mirrored the growing interest among local architects, reformers and politicians in defining and experimenting with a modern idiom for public housing during the New Deal. They often became spaces of mediation and negotiation between designers, public officials, curators and trustees over design solutions. Through a critical assessment of a series of housing exhibitions held in New York between 1932 and 1944, this chapter sheds light on one of the multiple and less-documented paths of American modernism, allowing a new insight on the role played by the New Deal agency in producing the driving force for the affirmation of an authentic, modern American architecture, which took shape also on the ground of public housing 1. Manifesto projects and model-projects were instrumental to familiarize the American audience with the housing programs launched on a national scale by Roosevelt in 1934 and exhibitions served an important function in negotiating the encounter between European models and progressive ideals with a recently approved set of federal standards and codes. This essay also contributes to an understanding of MoMA’s political and civic commitment during the Depression, as well as its enduring role as “tastemaker” in educating American professionals and building awareness among government agencies and the lay public about modern housing.